Identifying the “terrorist” other utilizes imperialism to promote the “non-terrorists” and subordinate and exterminate all non-Western culture.
Makau Mutua, prof of Law and director of the Human Rights Center State University of New York @ Buffalo School of Law, 2002, Buffalo Human Rights Law Review, “Terrorism and Human Rights: Power, Culture, and Subordination” Lexis In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, theUnited Stateshas led the Western and European worlds towards a stronger consensus that re-emphasizes the centrality of American -- and Western -- predestination in geopolitics. The September 11 attacks on the United States have become the pretext for the renewal of a world order centered on Eurocentric norms and processes of global governance and domination. Nothing more poignantly captures this reality than the repeated warning by senior American officials: "you are either with us, or you are against us." The "us-and-them" dichotomy has a familiar ring and logic in the history of the West and of international law. That refrain has remained virtually unbroken in the history of the discipline and its practice. In fact, one cannot understand the history of international law without locating it in the colonial project, which gave birth to it. n1 That period, which I call the Age ofEurope, denotes a historical and philosophical paradigm; that of European hegemony imposed over the globe, particularly the South, over the last five centuries, culminating in the domination of theAmericas,Africa,Asia, and the Pacific. International law is the legal fiction that was deployed to create and justify the Age ofEurope. The September 11 attacks -- and the subsequent declaration of the so-called global war on terrorism -- provide the fuel for the further consolidation of globalization. States and other international law-making fora, such as the United Nations, have come under intense pressure from theUnited Statesand its European allies to subordinate all other interests and questions, no matter how important and urgent, to a new international security-driven order geared toward the elimination of "global terrorism."Since the September 11 attacks have been presented as an assault on Western civilization, it is important to unpack the meaning of the term. Broken [*2] down to its bare bones, Western civilization denotes a complex of political, cultural, and economic arrangements which are rooted in liberal theory and philosophy. The current manifestation of that civilization seems to require some form of political democracy and a free-market system at home. The Judeo-Christian cultural and moral values of the West form the core social bases of Western civilization. It is out of these traditions that the current post-1945 universal human rights corpus was constructed.
This paper argues that the reassertion of American and European domination of the globe -- under the pretext of the global war on terrorism -- will have profound and long-lasting implications on human rights. It crushes dissent and virtually eliminates any opportunities for a robust dialogue on the scope of human rights, their cultural relevance, and the strategies for their enforcement. Secondly, and more importantly, the war on terrorism gives theUnited Statesthe ability to define its preferred human rights, and to exclude and narrow the scope of others. Third, it allows theUnited Statesto define the opponents of its version of human rights as enemies or supporters and sympathizers of global terrorism. In this "us-and-them" dialectic, the project for the reconstruction and multi-culturalization of human rights will become increasingly difficult -- if not impossible -- as human rights are more openly defined and identified with the vision of the Bush administration. But there is hope beneath this mountain of despair. The unabashed and unbridled exercise of American power over the globe should remove the last pretenses of any consensual processes for constructing the universality of rights and the neutrality of the institutions of global governance. Advocates for a truly universal human rights doctrine should seize the moment to underscore these deep and abiding imbalances in power. And there could be a bonus. Although it is highly unlikely, the official guardians of human rights may develop some sympathy for the position of those of who have critiqued the human rights corpus for its cultural and political biases.
But this paper also contends that the global war on terrorism targets non-Western peoples, cultures, and causes, particularly where they diverge from -- or resist subordination to -- certain Western interests. The war on terrorism is mainly focused on certain Islamic traditions and political projects. This is particularly the case where some Arab and Muslim political actors and movements deem American policies in theMiddle Eastand the Muslim world detrimental. Whether one likes it or not, the war on terrorism has exposed a deep cultural divide between the West and many in the Islamic and Arab World. In this contest, the West has not been shy to put forward its script of human history. It is a text that emphatically warns that the summit of human civilization can only exist within the perimeters of liberal theory and philosophy. It seems a foregone conclusion: Muslim [*3] societies, like all other non-Western societies, must modernize, democratize, liberalize, and adopt open, free market systems. The message is loud and clear. Islamic societies must Westernize or perish.
The “terrorist” label dehumanizes those whom it is applied to and gives “freedom of action” to the government paving the way toward violence. Journal of Political and Military Sociology, Summer 2002, “The Rhetoric of ‘Terrorism’ and its Consequences.” (http://animalliberationfront.com/ALFront/terrorism.htm) The discriminatory applications of the terms ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorist’ by the U. S. Government and mainstream American media reveal that neither uses these terms with any real concern for consistency, completeness, and accuracy. If they did, and if the U.S. Government really meant what it says it means when it proclaims a “war on terrorism,” then the United States would be declaring war on itself, or, at the very least, upon its allies that have practiced or supported violence against civilians for political ends.
Instead, these terms are selectively used by governments and media to describe those who resort to force in opposing governmental policies. This development is not entirely surprising. For example, we might expect that the U.S. State Department will be selective in its catalog of terrorist incidents since it is an arm of a government pursuing its own political agenda. It is a bit more difficult to understand why a free press should follow the Government’s lead, but some have tried to explain this phenomenon by pointing out that the American media “support the existing social, political, and economic order in which they operate because they are part of and benefit from that order, and the views they convey rarely stray far from the norm” (Picard 1993: 121).12
The American situation is not unique in this regard; other countries, including Israel, Great Britain, Russia, India and Egypt routinely do the same, and so might any state in describing militant insurgents opposed to its policies, like the Nazis in describing resistance fights in the Warsaw ghetto (Herman and O’Sullivan 1989: 261). There is a definite political purpose in so doing. Because of its negative connotation, the ‘terrorist’ label automatically discredits any individuals or groups to which it is affixed; it dehumanizes them, places them outside the norms of acceptable social and political behavior, and portrays them as people who cannot be reasoned with.13 As a consequence, the rhetoric effectively,
erases any incentive that an audience might have to understand the point of view of those individuals and groups so that it can ignore the history behind their grievances;
deflects attention away from one’s own policies that might have contributed to these grievances;
repudiates any calls to negotiate with them;
paves the way for the use of force and violence in dealing with them, and in particular, gives a government “freedom of action” by exploiting the fears of its own citizens and stifling any objections to the manner in which it deals with them.14
The alternative is to “reject the rhetoric of the war on terrorism” that the affirmative embraces. This is the only means to escape to construct of the “terrorist” other and prevent extermination.
Makau Mutua, prof of Law and director of the Human Rights Center State University of New York @ Buffalo School of Law, 2002, Buffalo Human Rights Law Review, “Terrorism and Human Rights: Power, Culture, and Subordination” Lexis Nothing in the recent past has posed a greater challenge to human rights than the war on terrorism. Traditional human rights advocates within the United Nations and human rights organizations, even in the West, are now faced with new limitations on the scope of their advocacy. Governments of all political stripes are now freer to pursue more muscular policies towards their dissenters. Non-Western human rights thinkers -- especially those who critique the corpus as Eurocentric and challenge its universality -- have been put on the defensive because of suggestions that their views may further polarize cultural and political divides and harm the march toward universality. They have also been accused of stoking and fueling anti-Western feelings, ideologies, and causes. In this climate, it will be difficult to pursue honest and robust conversations about the cultural inclusiveness -- and exclusiveness -- of human rights. In a word, the project of the genuine universalization or multi-culturalization of human rights has become [*12] even more of an uphill task than before. But we should not lose sight of what has to be done to construct a culturally-plural human rights corpus.
Before the September 11 attacks, the promise of human rights to the Third World was that problems of cruel conditions of life, state instability, and other social crises could be contained, if not substantially eliminated, through the rule of law, grants of individual rights, and a state based on constitutionalism. Through human rights, theThird Worldwas asked to follow a particular script of history. That script places hope for the future of the international community in liberal nationalism and democratic internal self-determination. The impression given is that a unitary international community is possible within this template if only theThird Worldfollowed suit by climbing up the civilizational ladder. But this historical model, as now diffused through human rights, cannot respond to the needs of theThird Worldabsent some radical rethinking and restructuring of the international order. The war on terror does not change that fact. The human rights movement must abandon the savage-savior-victim metaphor if there is going to be real hope in a genuine international discourse on rights. The relentless efforts to universalize an essentially European corpus of human rights through Western crusades cannot succeed. Nor will demonizing those who resist it. The critiques of the corpus from Africans, Asians, Muslims, Hindus, and a host of critical thinkers from around the world are the one avenue through which human rights can be redeemed and truly universalized. This multi-culturalization of the corpus could be attempted in a number of areas: balancing between individual and group rights, giving more substance to social and economic rights, relating rights to duties, and addressing the relationship between the corpus and economic systems. These substantive critiques must be carried out with urgency, otherwise the war on terror will destroy whatever consensus has developed to date.
Makau Mutua, prof of Law and director of the Human Rights Center State University of New York @ Buffalo School of Law, 2002, Buffalo Human Rights Law Review, “Terrorism and Human Rights: Power, Culture, and Subordination” Lexis
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the United States has led the Western and European worlds towards a stronger consensus that re-emphasizes the centrality of American -- and Western -- predestination in geopolitics. The September 11 attacks on the United States have become the pretext for the renewal of a world order centered on Eurocentric norms and processes of global governance and domination. Nothing more poignantly captures this reality than the repeated warning by senior American officials: "you are either with us, or you are against us." The "us-and-them" dichotomy has a familiar ring and logic in the history of the West and of international law. That refrain has remained virtually unbroken in the history of the discipline and its practice. In fact, one cannot understand the history of international law without locating it in the colonial project, which gave birth to it. n1 That period, which I call the Age of Europe, denotes a historical and philosophical paradigm; that of European hegemony imposed over the globe, particularly the South, over the last five centuries, culminating in the domination of the Americas, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. International law is the legal fiction that was deployed to create and justify the Age of Europe.
The September 11 attacks -- and the subsequent declaration of the so-called global war on terrorism -- provide the fuel for the further consolidation of globalization. States and other international law-making fora, such as the United Nations, have come under intense pressure from the United States and its European allies to subordinate all other interests and questions, no matter how important and urgent, to a new international security-driven order geared toward the elimination of "global terrorism." Since the September 11 attacks have been presented as an assault on Western civilization, it is important to unpack the meaning of the term. Broken [*2] down to its bare bones, Western civilization denotes a complex of political, cultural, and economic arrangements which are rooted in liberal theory and philosophy. The current manifestation of that civilization seems to require some form of political democracy and a free-market system at home. The Judeo-Christian cultural and moral values of the West form the core social bases of Western civilization. It is out of these traditions that the current post-1945 universal human rights corpus was constructed.
This paper argues that the reassertion of American and European domination of the globe -- under the pretext of the global war on terrorism -- will have profound and long-lasting implications on human rights. It crushes dissent and virtually eliminates any opportunities for a robust dialogue on the scope of human rights, their cultural relevance, and the strategies for their enforcement. Secondly, and more importantly, the war on terrorism gives the United States the ability to define its preferred human rights, and to exclude and narrow the scope of others. Third, it allows the United States to define the opponents of its version of human rights as enemies or supporters and sympathizers of global terrorism. In this "us-and-them" dialectic, the project for the reconstruction and multi-culturalization of human rights will become increasingly difficult -- if not impossible -- as human rights are more openly defined and identified with the vision of the Bush administration. But there is hope beneath this mountain of despair. The unabashed and unbridled exercise of American power over the globe should remove the last pretenses of any consensual processes for constructing the universality of rights and the neutrality of the institutions of global governance. Advocates for a truly universal human rights doctrine should seize the moment to underscore these deep and abiding imbalances in power. And there could be a bonus. Although it is highly unlikely, the official guardians of human rights may develop some sympathy for the position of those of who have critiqued the human rights corpus for its cultural and political biases.
But this paper also contends that the global war on terrorism targets non-Western peoples, cultures, and causes, particularly where they diverge from -- or resist subordination to -- certain Western interests. The war on terrorism is mainly focused on certain Islamic traditions and political projects. This is particularly the case where some Arab and Muslim political actors and movements deem American policies in the Middle East and the Muslim world detrimental. Whether one likes it or not, the war on terrorism has exposed a deep cultural divide between the West and many in the Islamic and Arab World. In this contest, the West has not been shy to put forward its script of human history. It is a text that emphatically warns that the summit of human civilization can only exist within the perimeters of liberal theory and philosophy. It seems a foregone conclusion: Muslim [*3] societies, like all other non-Western societies, must modernize, democratize, liberalize, and adopt open, free market systems. The message is loud and clear. Islamic societies must Westernize or perish.
The “terrorist” label dehumanizes those whom it is applied to and gives “freedom of action” to the government paving the way toward violence.
Journal of Political and Military Sociology, Summer 2002, “The Rhetoric of ‘Terrorism’ and its Consequences.” (http://animalliberationfront.com/ALFront/terrorism.htm)
The discriminatory applications of the terms ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorist’ by the U. S. Government and mainstream American media reveal that neither uses these terms with any real concern for consistency, completeness, and accuracy. If they did, and if the U.S. Government really meant what it says it means when it proclaims a “war on terrorism,” then the United States would be declaring war on itself, or, at the very least, upon its allies that have practiced or supported violence against civilians for political ends.
Instead, these terms are selectively used by governments and media to describe those who resort to force in opposing governmental policies. This development is not entirely surprising. For example, we might expect that the U.S. State Department will be selective in its catalog of terrorist incidents since it is an arm of a government pursuing its own political agenda. It is a bit more difficult to understand why a free press should follow the Government’s lead, but some have tried to explain this phenomenon by pointing out that the American media “support the existing social, political, and economic order in which they operate because they are part of and benefit from that order, and the views they convey rarely stray far from the norm” (Picard 1993: 121).12
The American situation is not unique in this regard; other countries, including Israel, Great Britain, Russia, India and Egypt routinely do the same, and so might any state in describing militant insurgents opposed to its policies, like the Nazis in describing resistance fights in the Warsaw ghetto (Herman and O’Sullivan 1989: 261). There is a definite political purpose in so doing. Because of its negative connotation, the ‘terrorist’ label automatically discredits any individuals or groups to which it is affixed; it dehumanizes them, places them outside the norms of acceptable social and political behavior, and portrays them as people who cannot be reasoned with.13 As a consequence, the rhetoric effectively,
The alternative is to “reject the rhetoric of the war on terrorism” that the affirmative embraces. This is the only means to escape to construct of the “terrorist” other and prevent extermination.
Makau Mutua, prof of Law and director of the Human Rights Center State University of New York @ Buffalo School of Law, 2002, Buffalo Human Rights Law Review, “Terrorism and Human Rights: Power, Culture, and Subordination” Lexis
Nothing in the recent past has posed a greater challenge to human rights than the war on terrorism. Traditional human rights advocates within the United Nations and human rights organizations, even in the West, are now faced with new limitations on the scope of their advocacy. Governments of all political stripes are now freer to pursue more muscular policies towards their dissenters. Non-Western human rights thinkers -- especially those who critique the corpus as Eurocentric and challenge its universality -- have been put on the defensive because of suggestions that their views may further polarize cultural and political divides and harm the march toward universality. They have also been accused of stoking and fueling anti-Western feelings, ideologies, and causes. In this climate, it will be difficult to pursue honest and robust conversations about the cultural inclusiveness -- and exclusiveness -- of human rights. In a word, the project of the genuine universalization or multi-culturalization of human rights has become [*12] even more of an uphill task than before. But we should not lose sight of what has to be done to construct a culturally-plural human rights corpus.
Before the September 11 attacks, the promise of human rights to the Third World was that problems of cruel conditions of life, state instability, and other social crises could be contained, if not substantially eliminated, through the rule of law, grants of individual rights, and a state based on constitutionalism. Through human rights, the Third World was asked to follow a particular script of history. That script places hope for the future of the international community in liberal nationalism and democratic internal self-determination. The impression given is that a unitary international community is possible within this template if only the Third World followed suit by climbing up the civilizational ladder. But this historical model, as now diffused through human rights, cannot respond to the needs of the Third World absent some radical rethinking and restructuring of the international order. The war on terror does not change that fact.
The human rights movement must abandon the savage-savior-victim metaphor if there is going to be real hope in a genuine international discourse on rights. The relentless efforts to universalize an essentially European corpus of human rights through Western crusades cannot succeed. Nor will demonizing those who resist it. The critiques of the corpus from Africans, Asians, Muslims, Hindus, and a host of critical thinkers from around the world are the one avenue through which human rights can be redeemed and truly universalized. This multi-culturalization of the corpus could be attempted in a number of areas: balancing between individual and group rights, giving more substance to social and economic rights, relating rights to duties, and addressing the relationship between the corpus and economic systems. These substantive critiques must be carried out with urgency, otherwise the war on terror will destroy whatever consensus has developed to date.